This site will present you an episode of American history which is not often
talked about. In the last decades of the 19th century a battle raged in the United States
around a problem so arcane in nature that very few understood it at all, but so important
in scope that everybody in the country has been affected during years from it. The simple
change of monetary standard gave rise to a
national debate that dominated the last two presidential elections of the century, and in
which everybody in the country, from the humble toilers to the great East Coast magnates
participated. Hundreds of popular tracts, scholarly books were published about the virtues
and vices of the Bimetallic versus the Gold Standard, lectures were given and political
parties were founded on this sole topic.

To understand what follows you need first to read my site
on bimetallism.

The purpose of the following pages is to give you an
entertaining overview of a matter sometimes left in the academic dryness of figures,
formulas and austere graphs. I offer you many colorful slides, pictures and cartoons to
make this chapter of American history alive.